


my identity by itself causes violence

by anamatics



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Companionable Snark, Gen, Joan Watson is having none of this shit, Organized Crime, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-05 20:14:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1830892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamatics/pseuds/anamatics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock and Joan investigate a series of break-ins at an up-and-coming art gallery, a tea shop owner is contracted to kill a reclusive artist.  Joan thinks she's got this figured out, but she might have it all backwards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my identity by itself causes violence

**Author's Note:**

> This was written to clear out about half of the prompts in my inbox on tumblr. They are as follows:  
> \- Joan protects Moriarty  
> \- Moriarty leaves Joan coded messages in artwork.  
> \- Moriarty perusing Joan's ipod (also should be noted that I ignored the 'Ms. New Booty' lyrics that went along with the prompt)  
> \- sassy Moriarty and annoyed Joan
> 
> song lyrics from Untouchable by Dragonette (arguably the most Joan x Moriarty song ever), title from n.w.a.'s Fuck the Police.

_Oh and I want to believe_

_You don't know what you're doing_

_When you open the door_

_To the devil you know_

  
New York in the summer is a drag, always.  The days seem to push together and the sheer mass of humanity and cars that the city contains pushes the temperature up and up until Joan wants to spend the days sitting in a kiddie pool full of ice and very water like she used to do as a child.  It is too hot to think, too hot to even _move._

Work is unusually slow, and without an excuse to linger at the brownstone, Joan has found herself, for the first time in years, without anything to do. Marcus has been busy preparing for an upcoming trial with the district attorney and there haven't been any cases that interest either of them in weeks.  Sherlock, naturally, used this as an opportunity to look for something else to do with his time.  What he found a private consulting gig for a local gallery looking into a series of attempted and then successful break-ins.  Joan thinks it's a bit beneath them until she starts to actually listen to the guy they're currently interviewing.  It's something to do though, and it keeps them working - working together - through the complicated and chaotic waters of their relationship as of late.

The consulting work that Sherlock had taken on with MI-6, his desperate attempt to make things right with Mycroft, had dried up, shriveled like the leaves of the plant that sits in the window of Joan's tiny apartment. They told him that there was nothing they could do for Mycroft, that they had to leave the Milieu group – proven by Sherlock to be an old Corsican mafia family – in place, for the time being, and that it might be better if Sherlock went back to New York.  They’d get what’s coming to them, MI-6 had promised Sherlock, but Sherlock had protested as was his nature until they said _something_ to him to ensure his cooperation.

So back he came, arriving on Joan's doorstep at seven in the morning as she was heading out for a run, asking for forgiveness and understanding.  He'd offered her the world that day, held it up on a silver platter and had offered to make her its queen. Joan had almost taken it.  It had been tantalizing, but she'd had to remain firm.  She needed this more than she needed him.  And her own space -- _god,_ having her own space was amazing.  Being able to sleep in was amazing, being able to sit and mope and feel angry at herself for ever getting involved with Mycroft Holmes in the first place was amazing.  _Privacy_ was amazing.

Yet it was an empty feeling of contentment, an ache were something was missing that could not yet be defined. 

She'd destroyed a good thing, getting involved with Mycroft and leaving as she did, but she wasn't the one who'd lied.

Joan sits across from Will Beaufort at the small tea shop that he owns, taking in the man's tea and sweat stained t-shirt and faded jeans.  He's rough around the edges, hard at the mouth and eyes, pushing forty but still trying to keep up with the rapid gentrification of the area with cut off jean shorts and coke-bottle glasses that slide down his sweaty nose in the heat of the midsummer morning.

The tea shop is directly across the street from the gallery, and the two have a somewhat symbiotic relationship, according to Sherlock's inquiries at least.  Being one of the few tea shops in the area with a liquor license, Will Beaufort's business certainly benefits from catering to the upscale crowd that the gallery attracts.  The gallery reciprocates by allowing the artwork that they curate to spill out and decorate the tea shop with a few smaller pieces that are sure to sell.

"As I was sayin'," Will Beaufort leans forward, fingers bridged and his forearms resting on the table.  The air is heavy, sticky, even at this early hour.  It's oppressive, and Joan wants inside and air conditioning as soon as possible.  "I usually cut outta here about nine-thirty or so unless they're doing an opening.  I leave that to the night manager, Jesse."  He eyes Joan, shoving his glasses up his nose with the back of his thumb. Joan stares right back, because she's not afraid of a washed-up hipster who thinks that if he's charming he'll get her number.

Sherlock glances between the two of them before he lays his hands flat on the table.  "Don't you think it's a bit curious that it doesn't appear that anything's been taken, Mr. Beaufort?"

He shrugs, raising a hand to rub at the back of his thinning hair.  "Don't know, but I gotta say, it doesn't sound like a good use of your time, if you get my meaning.  They've got one of the best security systems in the neighborhood over there." Will Beaufort leans forward then, a curious expression coming over his face. He lowers his voice to an almost conspiratorial whisper when he finally does speak, addressing Joan exclusively.  "If you ask me, someone's getting ready to pull a job here."

"A job?"

Will Beaufort's eyes flick back to Sherlock.  "Yeah, like a heist or whatever.  They've got this super reclusive artist coming in... I think the set up's already started."

"Yes, the gallery being between shows was something of an oddity in this case," Sherlock agrees, looking pensive.  He rubs his chin.  "Do you know anything about the artist?"  They hadn't been able to get much out of the gallery owner, only a few clipped news articles from various European galleries and the promotional material printed over a cityscape at night.  Joan can't shake how familiar it is, but neither she nor Sherlock can place it.  The pseudonym that the artist paints under is such a completely and mundane that they can't even google it.  It's too common across the whole of the US and Europe.

"Nothing much, they want me to show a triptych here, small though, only about twelve by twenty eight inches for the entire thing."  Will Beaufort turns and indicates an open stretch of wall currently decorated with a rather energetic looking pathos vine.  "I imagine that they'll come and have a look, once it's up."

It's then that Joan sees it, the subtle shifting of his facial expression, arranged from perfectly natural confusion to something that almost looks eager.  Will Beaufort wants to meet this artist for some reason.  Joan understands the fascination with the unknown only too well, but there is something about the way that his eyes grow even harder at the edges, hidden though they are behind his huge glasses. It sets Joan's teeth on edge, it makes her nervous.

When they leave, some twenty minutes later, and scoot across a gap in the traffic to the mostly empty gallery once more, Joan points it out to Sherlock.  "He has an agenda," she says.

Sherlock isn't so quick to believe, but he does listen to her concerns. They relay them to the gallery owner, a thin, reedy woman named Kathryn Hannoy.  She throws her head back, hair in a thick blonde braid falling down her back, laughing.

"Will's a total nerd," she says.  Making a dismissive shooing gesture, Kathryn Hannoy turns and picks up a picture frame from her desk.  She passes it over to Joan and Sherlock. Inside the frame is an obviously younger Kathryn depicted with Will Beaufort, standing in front of the gallery, their arms around each other.  "That was my first opening.  Believe me, Ms. Watson, he wouldn't hurt a fly."

Joan still isn't convinced.

"Oh, I meant to tell you, the first canvas arrived for the show, if you'd like to see."  Kathryn Hannoy takes her picture back and sets it carefully on her desk.  It's messy, covered in papers and preparation work for the show's opening in a week's time.  "Would you like to see it?"

"Don't you need the artist here to unpack such things?"  Sherlock asks, leaning forward on the balls of his feet, just enough of a quirk to make him seem engaged.  Joan knows that he's itching to do something other than this.  The case is interesting in the futility of it, break-ins with nothing taken, again and again, like prep for a heist.  That's their working theory, anyway.

Any look at the art might help them to discern if it's the sort of thing that could be stolen.  These aren't great masterworks, the artist is relatively unknown, but has apparently shown well at a lesser gallery in London.   Apparently, they didn't even bother to show up to their own opening, something about being detained.

Kathryn Hannoy's smiling face pinches into a concerned look.  "If I'm honest," she says, "I'm not even sure that she's going to show up to do any of the prep.  I've been inundated with emails from a blocked account with very specific set up instructions.  I don't mind facilitating it, honestly, especially because she's paying for it all.  I imagine that she's overseas still."

 _Elise Parker_ , Joan thinks darkly, _just who the hell are you?_

"So you'd be opening them anyway, that works for us," Joan says judiciously.  She doesn't want to appear pushy with this woman, as she's the one who's hired them to figure this out.  She can just easily tell them to get lost and Sherlock's interest is very clearly piqued.  Joan's is as well, only she's still trying to figure out how such an unknown artist can show at a gallery of this caliber.  The art world mystifies her on the best of days, though.  The sheer force of the pretentiousness that oozes out of places like this is enough to make Joan want to scream.

"Right?" Kathryn Hannoy's smile is broad and friendly.  Joan likes her.  She's got a good head on her shoulders and she likes seeing a woman running a business like this.  It's easy for her to recognize a kindred spirit. "It's in the back, come on."

The painting itself is wrapped in bubble wrap within a wooden crate.  Kathryn's got a guy prying the box apart, and Sherlock moves help him with the crowbar.  Joan stands back and regards the painting as the bubble wrap is stripped away.

It is a seaside, bleak and windswept with the blackness of the winter sea crashing against a snowy shore.  There's something haunting about it, a darkness that draws Joan into the image.  It pulls at her good mood and twists it around into sadness.  It's astonishing really, Joan isn't sure what it is, but she can tell by the way that Kathryn Hannoy is staring at it that she sees it too.

The question of how such a relative unknown could show here is answered, taking in this painting.  Kathryn Hannoy might have just found the next great painter of ... Joan doesn't know the art term for 'diamond in the rough.'

It is breath-taking.

Joan is still preoccupied with the painting as they sit next to each other on the train back to Sherlock's some forty-five minutes later.  It'd been too far and too hot out to walk, even though the subway isn't much cooler than the scorching temperatures outside.  Like the first one, the one that the gallery's promotional materials were printed on, there's this odd sense of familiarity that Joan can't shake. She's seen it before, she's sure, but she cannot place it, no matter how hard she tries.

She still has a key, Sherlock has never asked for it back. She's kept it knowing that as much as she's trying to pull away from him, the inevitability of their partnership is enough to draw her back.  It's easy, to fall into step beside him, to listen to him discuss things and to give her own observations.  She's good at this, she likes doing it.  She hates how she cannot be with him all the time; she's seen how he gets, how his eyes will linger on certain books that she knows house letters that she doesn't dare read.  She's seen how his hands shake and his body twitches - how he goes to more meetings than ever now.

A part of her wonders how close she put him to a relapse, in leaving.  She doesn't ever want to know, because she cannot take that responsibility.  She cannot be the one person who is keeping him sober.  He has to broaden himself, to understand that he cannot put her up on a pedestal like he'd done for Irene Adler, because Joan is even more flawed than that woman ever pretended to be.

"Do you think it's weird that the gallery has a top of the line security system but no cameras?"  Joan asks, following Sherlock downstairs into the kitchen.  She cannot shake the look in Will Beaufort's eyes, and every time she closes her eyes she sees them, black and hard magnified gigantic though his glasses.

Joan slumps down at the table, watching as Sherlock puts the kettle on for tea, despite the heat of the day.  At least there's central a/c in this building.  It is blissfully cool in here, and Joan just wants to linger, to curl up on the couch in the library upstairs and contemplate this case until they figure it out.

"I can understand it from an aesthetics perspective," Sherlock replies.  He goes about the motions for tea with the practiced ease of a habitual drinker.  He's been drinking more of it recently, she's noticed.  She wonders if this is just another way for him to cope with what's happened between them - between himself and Mycroft.  "But it is foolish."

"There was something about the way that Will Beaufort suggested that it was a heist that bothered me."  She takes the mug and tea bag when Sherlock passes them to her, ripping into the paper wrapping. She's already decided that she'll let the tea go cold before she drinks it.  "Why would he suggest something like that? It makes no sense."

"Maybe he watches too many movies."

"Maybe."

They lapse into silence then, Sherlock sipping scalding tea despite the heat of the day.  Joan's grows cold as the air conditioning comes on and the hollow, echoing sound of filtering air around the brownstone.  These stretches used to be companionable, comfortable, but now they feel strained to the point where Joan is almost grateful when Sherlock takes a call and drifts back upstairs to leave Joan to down her tepid tea and try to force herself to remember that she was the one who wanted to leave in the first place.

Sherlock is suffocating, exhilarating, an impossible combination of emotions that has Joan in fits on the best days.  She's so preoccupied that when Sherlock ask her if she can speak to the night manager at Will Beaufort's tea shop she simply nods.  Doing that is easier to stomach than staying here alone if he's going out.

"That was Marcus," he explains as Joan gathers her things to leave for the day. "He wants to go over what he and the district attorney want me to say at the trial next week."

Joan tilts her head to the side and smiles at him.  "So you can promptly ignore it."

"Why Watson,"  He rests his palm open on his chest and grins at her.  "One would think that you consider me a loose cannon."

"What you?"  Joan laughs, shaking her head.  " _Never_."  He grins at her and Joan almost wants to reach out, to pull him close and hug him to her.  To let him know that she isn't mad at him, that this was never about him at all.  She just needs space.  She's in her forties and living with a roommate is not unheard of in the city, but it's still weird.  She wants to be able to have a life and she needs to remember how to do that.  "If you have any mental space left after your thing with Marcus, try and figure out if you've seen that painting before.  I'm sure I've seen it before."

He gives her a long, pensive look before nodding once.  "You're not alone, there was something familiar about the brush work..."  He rubs at the back of his head. "I can't place it."  He shakes his head.  "Odd, I usually have a great memory for art - the way an artist uses a brush is like a fingerprint.  Even the best forgers cannot..."  He trails off, and Joan knows who he's thinking of.

"Well, think about it if you can." She says, and touches his arm gently before heading for the door. She doesn’t want to touch that wound today.  "I'll be by with breakfast tomorrow."

"Alright."

-

It's the nagging sense of familiarity that the windswept ocean at midwinter has evoked in Joan that has her lingering at Will Beaufort's tea shop late that evening.  She hadn't found out much from Jesse, the night manager, and now she sits and stares across the street at the illuminated gallery.  Someone is in there, working.

Someone that Joan recognizes.

"Fuck," she whispers, draining the rest of her tea and leaving a crumpled ten dollar  bill onto the table to both thank Jesse for his help and to pay for the 'on the house' iced tea he'd given her.  Her heart is hammering in her chest and she's mentally trying to figure out if the figure in paint-splattered jeans and a worn off-white men's dress shirt is going to be particularly welcoming of her intrusion.

And that was another thing: when the hell had they let her out?  Why wasn't she or Sherlock told?

Joan scoots across the street and stands before the gallery's glass door, taking a deep breath and raising her hand to knock on the door.

What happens next is almost comical in retrospect:  Joan shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot as the figure that had been moving about the gallery actually jumps in shock and proceeds to knock over a small cup of white paint that had been set beside a level and a tangle of framing wire on the floor.

Joan swallows and schools her face perfectly blank, giving a little wave as Jamie Moriarty looks down at her paint covered foot and toes off her shoe before crossing to expertly twist a set of lock picks around the door and push it open.

There's something about her, one shoe on, one shoe off, looking as unpolished as Joan has ever seen her, that has Joan taking half a step back.  There's a gun set atop a footstool and three other weapons that Joan can see from here.  Also the framing wire could probably be used in a pinch. If this is the moment where Moriarty finally exacts her revenge, Joan supposes that she did sort of walk right into it.

"Watson! What are you doing here?" Moriarty asks, pushing the door open and gesturing for her to come inside.  Joan hesitates, and Moriarty makes the beckoning gesture again.  "Quickly, the alarm goes off after thirty seconds." 

Ah, that would explain why the alarm’s been going off in odd intervals and no one ever seems to be around when the security company’s guards come to check on the property.  Moriarty can be a ghost when she wants, everyone knows that. 

Joan steps inside, feeling very much like she's marching to her doom.  "I _was_ investigating a series of break-ins here."  She emphasizes the 'was' because she's pretty sure that that's resolved.  Kathryn Hannoy will be happy to know that her gallery is being broken into by the artist she's showcasing. The thought of telling her is almost funny, and Joan has to remind herself quickly and forcefully that Moriarty is a terrible person that that while showing her work is nice, this is not at all what Joan envisioned Moriarty’s future holding. 

Moriarty lets out a quiet sound that could have been a laugh. "Well, Watson, you've caught me again."

"I wasn't aware that I needed to..."  Joan glances around at the now partially filled walls of the gallery.  A lot of this art she recognizes now, from the warehouse prison where they'd found her during that whole fiasco with Kayden Fuller's kidnapping.

"Oh yes, the Marshals let me go after I helped them locate some Iranians with a vial of something ghastly and plans to unleash it upon the city." She turns to Joan, a wicked smile creeping across her lips.  Joan doesn’t even want to think about another terrorist plot in the city.  One had been enough, the city would never be the same. She’d never be the same "They gave me immunity."

"Did they even realize they were letting you go before you walked out the front door?"

Moriarty's smile broadens. Joan braces herself for the sheer force of this woman's ego. "Well, I certainly never told them to sign anything like that."

"I'm sure."

"Don't be that way."

"My life was a lot easier without you running around mucking it up."

"I could say the same thing about you, Joan."  She turns to regard the seascape that Joan had so admired earlier.  "I will say that being allowed to roam free comes with its caveats."  She bends, tugging up the pant leg of her still bare foot and indicates an electronic monitoring anklet.  "They're worried I'll leave the country."

"I'm surprised you haven't attached that to some poor unsuspecting civilian and gone about your merry way," Joan retorts.  This whole thing doesn't make sense.  Moriarty's been breaking into the gallery to set up her show, and scope out the space, she gets that.  Joan supposes that her arrest and subsequent incarceration probably has put a damper on Moriarty's business.  Which is good, but it also probably leaves her vulnerable, grounded in a city where she'd had a presence, but never a firm hold.  She'd been a ghost, a god, Napoleon herself.

(Okay, Joan still wasn’t sure that she _got_ Sherlock's metaphor there, but it sounded nice. Something about the word Waterloo, she thinks.  That’s gotta be it.)

"For the time being," Moriarty replies, bending to use a towel to wipe up the paint that had spilled earlier.  "It is easier for me to remain here.  Keep an eye on you and Sherlock, paint."

"Pretend to be Elise Parker."

"That too."

"Sherlock always told me you didn't do original work."

"Sherlock believed what I what I told him.  That was his first mistake."  She purses her lips, paint soaked towel in her hand.  Her fingers are stained white as snow and Joan thinks she should object to the presence of the paint on her hand.  It's strange, Joan doesn’t know why she thinks that, but the thought is so gripping that she feels compelled, almost to say something.

She doesn't know this woman at all, no one does.  Perhaps she prefers life with paint staining her fingers.

"I always liked this painting," Moriarty continues, her tone almost conversational. She raises her clean hand to rub at her cheek, scratching at an itch, perhaps.  A nervous tick?  Joan has no idea.  They don’t know Moriarty at all, just what she wants them to see.  This conversation, as have all the others they’ve shared, should prove enlightening.  "Do you appreciate the violence of the ocean at midwinter, Joan?"

The ocean at midwinter is a terrifying thing. During her residency, while on an ER rotation, some firemen had been brought in along with a near-catatonic little boy who'd slipped off the bulkhead and fallen into the harbor. He'd been battered by the surf and they hadn't been fast enough.  She'd done everything she could think of to save the child, brought in her peers, her supervisor, anyone to help warm that little boy and snatch his life back from icy death.  He'd died, Joan helpless to do anything as the cold took him.  The firemen had been too late to save him.  Joan had been too late to save him.

He would not be the last.

"Is that why you painted it?" Joan asks. She cannot answer Moriarty's question.  It is showing too much of herself to this woman who's boasted that she can read Joan like a book.

Moriarty looks pensive, and wipes her hand on her smock.  She sets the rag aside on a drop cloth and moves to use the drop cloth to clean off her shoe.  "Yes and no.  From that warehouse I could hear boats coming and going from the naval yard.  They thought themselves very clever, putting a bag over my head and moving me in the dark, but I knew exactly where I was."  She looks up, pushing her hair from her eyes.  There's a streak of white paint across her forehead and she looks almost wild.  "It reminded me of a place I'd been once, long ago.  I painted that place to forget where I was."

"No," Joan says flatly, because that last bit is clearly a lie.  "You didn't want to forget."

There is a shift in Moriarty then, and the look she gives Joan is enough to make Joan take half a step back. The perfectly congenial, blank mask that she wears falls away to reveal the malice that lurks just below the surface of her honeyed words.  It bleeds in around her eyes and in the curl of her lip, twisting her face into an annoyed, if arrogant, scowl.

"How is it," Moriarty asks, her voice perfectly flat.  "That you are always to see through me as if I were glass, Joan Watson?"  She pushes herself to her feet, pulling her shoe back on and regarding Joan with the mask gone.

Joan shrugs.

"You should be afraid of me.  I would not hesitate to kill you."

"I don't think that's true."

"No, you're right. It probably isn't.  You're far too interesting to kill."

A flicker of movement catches Joan's eye.  A figure is outside the gallery's door.  Joan can't make out a face, but she recognizes the object in his hand all too well.  She sucks in a breath of air, hand reaching out blindly, grabbing on to the soft material of Moriarty's smock.  Her fingers tangle in the fabric and as the glass of the door shatters, Joan pulls on Moriarty hard and pushes off on feet unused to doing this with an extra person's worth of weight in tow.

She dives for the floor, pointing them towards the hallway that leads to the back offices.  Moriarty lets out an indignant little yelp, but falls along with Joan. Her expression twists then, into one of shock and then pain as she lands flat on her back, Joan half on top of her.

Another shot rings out, and there's the sound of more breaking glass.

"Back exit," Joan hisses, indicating with her head and tugging Moriarty to her feet. She can't think beyond getting out of here.  Moriarty is staring out at the gallery, the low yellow lights that illuminate the space.  She looks torn, and hesitates, just for a second.

"My gun."

"Leave it!"

"It isn't as easy as that, Watson."  And Moriarty is gone, darting across the room and collecting gun and purse, quick as can be.  She glances over her shoulder and Joan's stomach twists into a harsh knot. Another shot rings out, but Moriarty's already pushing past Joan, one hand tangling effortlessly with Joan's and tugging, moving them back towards the exit.

"Are you insane?" Joan breathes as Moriarty peers around the exit, pulling the slide back on her gun and twisting it first one way down the alley and then the other.  She looks like Marcus moving in on an arrest as she steps forward, and Joan’s struck by how alike criminals and cops really are. "Why the hell did you run back in there?"

"Someone's shooting at me, Watson.  I'd like to be able to shoot back."  She doesn't let their hands drop.  Joan stares down at their intertwined fingers, at the paint that streaks Moriarty's forehead and fingers.  She looks so different like this; not polished at all, rough around the edges.  Messy. Her hand is warm in Joan's, her grip tight without being pressuring or hurtful.

Moriarty pulls them to the left, back down the alley and towards the street beyond. Joan knows this neighborhood pretty well, she doesn't live all that far from here, and her old apartment was only about three blocks away.  There's a sense of panic in her then, as Moriarty twists between cars and draws her out into traffic and across the street and down another alley that Joan would have surely missed had she not noticed the small gap between the buildings.

They stop in the middle of the two, shielded by two dumpsters that reek of spoiled milk, and Moriarty looks down at their joined fingers, before gently letting them go.  "You should go left out of here," she says quietly. She's not even out of breath, and there is nothing in her voice that betrays what she's thinking. "I'll go right.  Hopefully they didn't get a good look at your face, Watson."

"I'm not leaving you."  Joan glances up the alley and catches sight of a bookstore she recognizes.  "Someone wanted to kill you."

"Someone always wants to kill me, Watson.  It is an unfortunate side effect of the job."

"Whatever, look, I--"

"You live around here and you think it's a good idea to go running back home?  Honestly, Watson, I thought you were intelligent."

Joan feels irritation surge within her, but she fights it down, reaching for Moriarty's hand.  Moriarty doesn't pull away, her fingers twitching under Joan's touch, but lingering.  "At least come up to regroup.  Call yourself a car or whatever it is you do in a situation like this."

In the low light of the alley, surrounded by the stink of hot garbage left out in the sun, it seems silly to hold out a hand and offer something she isn't really sure she can willingly give.  Moriarty's eyebrows pitch forward just a little, and it's as good as a look of utter bafflement on anyone else. "Why are you helping me?"

There is no answer to that that Joan can articulate.  She sucks in a breath of air, and then another, the stink of the dumpster making her stomach turn in a way that the threat of Moriarty’s violence never could.  "Because I want to."

Moriarty regards Joan, a look of careful consideration drifting over her face, open and true.  A nod and a small, tight-lipped twitch of lips is all the consent that Moriarty gives to this plan.

"Put that away."  Joan adds, gesturing to the gun.  She's not sure that they've lost the figure who had shot out the windows of the gallery, but waving a gun around will attract his attention for sure.  Joan's breath catches, thinking of the bullets flying towards that beach scene that Moriarty had she was fond of.  She hopes that the paintings were spared.  There was no reason for them to be damaged.  The focus had been on them, on the windows that were the barrier between them and the gunman.  "It'll attract unnecessary attention."

"Jo--"

"Just do it, okay?"  Joan turns, heading up the alley and towards home.

The streets are mostly dark at this hour.  The coffee shops all closed hours ago.  Joan would normally be asleep right now, that is another thing that is different about living on her own.  There are no more strange sounds in the middle of the night, Sherlock blaring music or banging around with his single stick.  There's just... quiet.  Well, as quiet as the city can ever really be.

The bodega on the corner is still open, and Joan debates the merits of inside it for a moment to make sure that they're not followed.  She thinks better of it, eyeing the sky above, the shift of grey clouds against the blinding light of the city.  They need to stay moving.

Her new apartment is two blocks up, a third floor walk-up.  Joan likes it, her neighbors on all sides are quiet, and it's the perfect size for just her. She’d found it on a whim, coming back from looking at something else – a shittier ground floor unit that already showed the tell-tale signs of a roach infestation.  She doesn’t want to show Moriarty this place.  It’s a private place. Sherlock hasn’t quite gotten over the shock of her leaving to start simply showing up here – invading her space.  It is coming and she wonders if Moriarty is the same way, if she’ll start to show up here, if she’ll start to try and freak Joan out or stalk her.  Joan doesn’t want that, not by a long shot, but she is intrigued by why Moriarty isn’t putting up much of a fight about this.

Joan unlocks the street level door and twists around, staring up and down the quiet street.  A cab zooms by, but no one’s around. Joan doesn’t think that she’s ever seen the street so utterly devoid of people, but she takes it as a good omen. She holds the door open and Moriarty follows her silently inside.  It isn’t until Joan’s got one foot on the stairs that Moriarty gives voice to Joan’s very real concern. 

“Aren’t you at all concerned that I may let myself in here again, now that the invitation has been extended?”

“I think you’re smart enough understand that these are extenuating circumstances – _very­_ extenuating circumstances.”  She stands there for what feels like a long time, one foot on the first step.  She’s stuck somewhere between the idea that she can very easily turn and walk away from this.  She can tell Moriarty that she can’t do this, and that Moriarty might respect her wishes.  Joan isn’t sure that she’ll be so lucky, but it’s worth a try until Moriarty glances towards the door and does the strangest thing: she sucks her lower lip into her mouth and looks actually _worried_.  It’s enough to jolt Joan from her thoughts and remind her of the pressing nature of their situation.  She takes another set up the stairs, trying to force herself to feel resolute. “Third floor, come on.”

Moriarty is silent.  She tucks her hands into her back pockets and trots up the stairs behind Joan in silent, canvas sneakers.  Joan stops on the third floor landing just long enough to make sure that they’re not followed before she unlocks her door.  The idea of locking Moriarty into her apartment with her strikes Joan as only slightly foolish.  Today is her day for walking into impossible situations, it seems. 

Standing in the middle of Joan’s living room, Moriarty sets her purse down on the coffee table and looks around.  Joan’s still in the process of deciding if she’s going to stay, if her decoration will linger beyond what is functional.  Sherlock’s been over a few times, and he’s got a key, but he’s respecting her need for distance better than she would have expected.  This has to be done on her terms. 

The couch is the new one that she’d made her old super buy her after the whole shooting porn on it fiasco.  It’s a cream color and comfortable enough to sleep someone, but Joan doesn’t want this to extend into something like that.  Joan’s hung some pictures on the walls, art prints she’d collected when she was trying to present an image of herself that she still isn’t sure matches her personality, but mostly the space is as barren and empty as her room at Sherlock’s had been. It feels transient, even though it’s been months since she’s left that place.  “This is a very nice flat, Watson.”  Moriarty announces. “You were lucky to find it.”  Her eyebrows are furrowed, just a little bit, and Joan follows her line of thought almost effortlessly.

The question hangs unanswered and Joan catches herself thinking that maybe she owes Moriarty an explanation.  It’s not true at all, she doesn’t owe Moriarty anything.  “Sherlock and I were getting too….” She trails off, trying to find the right word.  She wants to say that it was simply becoming too complex, their relationship morphing and changing so quickly that Joan could barely keep up. 

“ _Incestuous_?” And Moriarty rolls the words around her tongue, a slightly wicked smile drifting across her face.  Joan opens her mouth to retort that they were nothing of the sort, but Moriarty cuts her off with a wave of her hand. “Because you were.  I would have strangled him months ago; your tolerance for all of his irritating little quirks is obviously more impressive than my own.”

“Well, I also had the good grace to tell him I was leaving and didn’t _fake my own death_ in order to do it.”  It was a coward’s way out, and they both knew it. 

“I had my reasons.”  She looks away, hair falling into her eyes, and seems almost _sad_ about it.  Joan won’t accept that, because the sadness isn’t something that she can ever accept.  She broke Sherlock and then came back to break him again.  She’d told him she’d never kill him in the same breath as tell him that she’d hurt him as badly she could.  Just to see what he’d do.

Joan had seen through her then, but now, as she finds herself contemplating all the little details of Moriarty that they’d learned since then, she isn’t sure she understands Moriarty as well as she’d maybe want Moriarty to admit.  She would have never thought someone like Moriarty would have _ever_ considered keeping a child that could and would be used to hurt her alive.  She tilts her head, because she doesn’t want this argument.  She’s never wanted this argument.  “I’m sure.”

“I tried to warn him about his brother, you know,” Moriarty has pulled a phone from her pocket, blank and simple.  A burner.  She’s texting, eyes focused on the phone, fingers flying in what Joan is certain is that damn code that had given them so much trouble. 

“How could you have possibly—” Joan stops herself, knowing that it’s folly.  Of course Moriarty knew. Of fucking course. “You did?”

“Yes.  Mycroft Holmes never came close to my organization, but some of the others he became quite close with, I was aware of his presence and when Sherlock mentioned him in a letter, when I’ve never known him to even speak of the man, I realized that he must have come back into your life somehow.  After the--” she falters, seems to steady herself.  Joan wonders if she has trouble speaking about Kayden Fuller in general.  “After I’d dealt with Kayden Fuller’s kidnapping, I told him that he had to be careful, that there was corruption in this world and it was closer to home than even he knew.”  She looks up then, thumbs hovering over her phone screen.  “I had no idea he’d involve you as well, Joan, and I’m sorry for that.”

“Sherlock ignored your warning, then,” Joan wraps her arms around herself.

“Well, I had lost a great deal of blood; he could have thought it the ramblings of a dying woman.”

Joan stares balefully at her.  The scars are still present on her wrists, and the way that she’d been so willing to put herself close to death to save a little girl that was not even her’s beyond a tentative blood connection is enough to throw all of Joan’s prior assumptions about Moriarty into limbo.  She doesn’t know anymore.  And it is the not knowing that scares her.  “Do you know where she is now?”

“I’ve made arrangements to have her and her mother moved, if that’s what you’re asking.”  Moriarty’s lips form a thin line, “But exactly where they are?  No, I don’t know.  It isn’t wise to know.”

“Mycroft is the same way.”  Joan shakes her head.  He’s told her in a few hasty words that he’s safe and has expected that to be enough for her.  As though Joan won’t remember the pain of all of his lies crashing down around her shoulders as he came in expecting to be her knight in shining armor.  Joan hated him for that.  Hated him for not remembering that maybe, just maybe, he was the one who owed her a better explanation than the one he’d been willing to give. 

Moriarty looks up from her phone.  “Ah yes, hiding from the Corsicans.”  She shakes her head.  “They’re a nasty piece of work, I don’t envy him, trying to get it all sorted.”  Her fingers start to move over the phone screen now, quick and efficient.  Joan wants to know what she’s typing; if she’s calling out a hit on the people who attacked her, the people who attacked her art.  If it is because Joan was there at all that this is even happening.  Had Joan not been there to wrench her out of the way, would Moriarty have even hesitated before picking up the gun and ending their assailant’s life? 

Now the gun sits in Moriarty’s half open purse, plainly visible and easily within reach.  Joan wants to lean over, to see if Moriarty’s like everyone else with concealer and breath mints and a battered old paperback in her purse.  Does she use tampons or pads? What sort of chapstick and lotion does she carry? The questions rattle around in Joan’s head and she cannot quiet them.  She doesn’t want to quiet them.  They hold the key to this, the key to everything.  She doesn’t know Moriarty at all.  None of them do.  They know an image of Moriarty, an image she’d wanted to encourage once.  Now Joan think she sees the real Moriarty, the one that was hidden, cast behind a mask of a mask of a mask.  She doesn’t know who this woman in her battered, paint-splattered jeans and smock – tank top just barely visible between the buttons – is; she doesn’t know anything about her other than once she painted a picture of Joan that had caught Joan, struck her as beautiful.

“I’m sorry,” Moriarty says, and her voice says that she is anything but, “That you become involved with Mycroft and his terrible business relations.  It was a disservice to you, to expect you to be so willingly kept in the dark.  He should have known better.”

“He couldn’t have known what was about to happen.” It is a lie that Joan tells herself every night as she falls asleep, twisting and thinking of what he’d said to her, the words he’s spoken while a ziptie was still cutting off the circulation to her wrists.  The lies he’d told, even then.  He hadn’t set her free, but kept her captive until he could figure out if she was friend of foe. 

And that, more so than anything else, made Joan hate him for lying to her, for drawing her back into his web.  It wasn’t fair.  She had never signed up to be the patsy or the victim.  It wasn’t a reasonable expectation for her to take what Mycroft had thrown at her. 

“Could he?”  Moriarty raises an eyebrow and tucks her phone into the back pocket of her jeans.  She sticks her hands into her pockets, an affected casualness about her that feels disingenuous to Joan as she regards Moriarty form across the rooms.  “The signs were there, had he bothered to look. I was out of my warehouse prison for all of six hours and I saw the signs.”

“He isn’t like you—”

“I should hope not,” Moriarty’s lip curls as she cuts Joan off.  “I would not have left you in the dark.”

“Would you?”  Joan practically spits the words out.  This is a horrible idea.  She should have known better.  Being a good person was never her intent.  It was never her want to be that person, that good, kind person who’d smile so politely and risk her life to save someone who didn’t deserve saving.  “I don’t think you would have told me either.”

“No, but I would have never allowed those who kidnapped you to live or take you in the first place.”  Moriarty tilts her head to one side.  “You are important, Joan.  Not only to Sherlock’s recovery, but to this -” she makes a sweeping gesture, Joan assumes she means the city as a whole, “-place.  It is better with you here.”  Her lips twist upwards.  “I’m glad I met you.”

Joan mirrors her gesture, knowing it will irritate her.  “And that isn’t because I’ve just saved your life?”

“Today’s heroics notwithstanding, you are a fascinating woman, Joan Watson.”  It’s then that Moriarty takes a step forward, collecting her gun from her purse and checking the bullet in the chamber before tucking it into the waistband of her pants.  “There is a true dearth of interesting people in this world, even fewer that can hold _my_ interest.  You are unique, Joan. A true work of art.”

Shifting, Joan scowls at Moriarty.  “Your objectification of me notwithstanding,” she says, turning to head into the small galley-style kitchen.  “Would you like some tea while you wait for your car?”

“How do you know I requested a driver?”

“You sent three texts.  The first, I assume, was to someone who can get you answers.  The second was to someone who could provide you a place to stay – safer than this at any rate. You paused then, thought about it, and then sent a third text.  I assume that one was for a car.”

“You’re getting quite good at Sherlock’s art, Watson.”

“Thanks…” Joan says, filling the kettle up at the sink.  “I think.”

“I do not mean offense, calling you a work of art.”

“Save it, you operate under the same terrible assumptions that Mycroft – that anyone in your line of work really – works under.  Asian women are to be objectified, I get it.  I just wish…”  She sets the kettle down heavily on the stove and clicks on the burner.  With a sigh, she turns to regard Moriarty. “I wish you could respect me as a human.”

“Humanity is overrated, Joan.”  And she’s right there, she’s right there, right behind Joan and she’s smiling.  It’s not the pretty, blank smile from before, but something warm and genuine.  The smile she’d seen this woman flash at Sherlock when she was pretending to be Irene Adler.  The affection behind it is enough to make Joan feel uncomfortable, make her feel twitchy and the unpleasant feeling seeps under her skin and twists around her heart.  She doesn’t want Moriarty there, doesn’t want her so close.  It feels dangerous, just having her this close.

A small smile plays across Moriarty’s lips and she steps into Joan’s personal space, hands reaching forward, taking Joan’s in her own, comfortable and familiar.  Joan wants to react violently, but she finds that she cannot.  She’s not quite leaning in, no that would be giving too much of this away, but she’s not backing off either.  Moriarty’s eyes are wide and so very blue that Joan catches herself staring.  “What do you want me to tell you? I appreciate art, more so than most people.  To compare you to such a thing is the highest form of flattery I know.”

“Look,” Joan starts.  Resolves to never do this ever again.  Tries to start once more and realizes that she cannot talk about this.  She cannot allow Moriarty to flatter her because to do so would only lead to things that Joan isn’t ready for, things Joan can never be ready for.  She can’t let them happen.  “Look, do you want something to drink or not?  I have um…”  She leans over and opens a cabinet.  “I have a black picot blend and my mother’s usual.”

Moriarty makes a humming noise at the back of her throat.  “What’s your mother’s usual?”

To tell the truth, Joan’s a little surprised that Moriarty doesn’t know already.  Maybe that’s her problem, on some level, she just assumes and assumes and she’s right more often than not.  Sherlock’s the same way, only he calls it deducing.  “A floral tea, she gets it in Chinatown.”  Joan shrugs, getting down the tin she keeps it in, and passing it to Moriarty, who gives it a tentative sniff.  “I usually stick to mint and jasmine blends, but I’ve run out, apparently.”

With a smile, Moriarty hands her back the tin.  “That would be fine, Joan.”  She slips onto a stool that Joan hasn’t had cause to use at the breakfast bar, looping her leg around the stool’s leg and resting on her elbows.  “And if you must know, I didn’t call for a car.  You were right about the other two.  The third text was to Sherlock, telling him to not bother with the gallery in the morning.  It’ll be sorted by then.” 

“Will it?”

“Oh yes, it’s amazing how small the world is, when you think about it.  The gunman works for the Corsicans, my man just confirmed it.  Do you know a William Beaufort?”

“He owns the coffee shop across the street from the gallery.”

“Ah,” Moriarty pulls out her phone and begins to text again.  “Don’t worry Joan,” she adds.  “Nothing terrible will happen to him.  I merely want to know him.  He’s expressed an interest in my work, after all.”

“By shooting at it.”  Joan follows the line of what is not said effortlessly, because it is obvious and Moriarty’s not making much of an effort to hide it. 

“Well, everyone appreciates art differently, Joan.”

Joan rolls her eyes and Moriarty’s lips quirk upwards into a smile.  Soon Joan is laughing, because the whole situation is terrible and Will Beaufort is probably going to be dead and she’s marginally complicit in his murder.  Moriarty’s laughing too, but it’s awkward and feels oddly organic.  Joan smiles as the kettle whistles and fills two mugs of her mother’s usual tea blend, wincing as the smell that Joan’s long-since become accustomed to wafts up to meet her nose.

“You don’t speak Chinese.”

“Not particularly well,” Joan replies, wondering where this thread of conversation is going.  “I was better when I was little, but that was a long time ago.  I lost most of it in college.  My French is much better.”

“Does that upset your mother, that you don’t speak your native tongue well?”

Joan bristles. “I was born here.”

“Ah,” Moriarty is quiet for a long time after that.  She sips the tea and stares hard at her phone for a long time. Joan leans against the counter and watches her, wondering when this is going to stop being a novelty for Moriarty and when her life will become endangered again. She knows that while Moriarty apparently appreciates her like she does art.  It doesn’t strike her as much of a compliment, really, but she knows that there is sincerity in Moriarty’s address.  “So how is your French?”

Shrugging, Joan sips her tea.  "Decent enough."

"I'd love to take you to Paris."

"That doesn't sound like a particularly good idea."

"No, I don't think it does either." Moriarty twists the mug in her hands around, staring down into the greenish liquid, steam curling around her face.  It makes the hairs that aren't caught up in the simple braid down her back frizz and curl upwards, making her look even more wildly unkempt than before.

Joan turns to the sink and wets a paper towel, passing it to Moriarty.  "You have paint on your forehead," she says.

Their fingers brush when Moriarty takes the damp paper towel from Joan. Joan wants to recoil away from her, knowing that she's stood in the living room of this apartment that Joan still isn't sure she wants and has arranged for a man to die.  They've tried to control the monster that lurks behind the pretty exterior of this woman and she's flaunting it.  Flaunting it because it is all she knows how to do.

"Will Beaufort better be alive when the police find him."  Joan watches as Moriarty scrubs at her forehead with the paper towel, lips turned slightly downwards into a frown.

"Oh, he will be.  I've no interest in compromising my freedom presently."  With her face scrubbed clean, Moriarty looks oddly young, younger than she should look considering how much blood is on her hands.  She shakes her head, fingers tangling in her escaped bangs as she leans forward to smile prettily at Joan.  "I almost broke that rule, you know, when I found out what had happened to you."

"I'm sure."  Joan knows why she is dismissive of the empty words as much as she knows why she wants to believe that there is truth in them.  Nothing that Moriarty says is ever the truth, she's always known that.  Catching her in this moment, so unguarded and open, it's enough to throw Joan.  If Moriarty is telling the truth, she's automatically better than Mycroft ever was.  Joan wants that, no matter how much she knows that it must be a lie.  She wants it.

She drinks the remainder of her tea and feels the words start to threaten to bubble forth, the questions to get the answers that she wants at the tip of her tongue.  Moriarty owes her a debt now, and this conversation in half-truths and has-beens could become very real very quickly, should Joan press for the truth.

"Is it so hard to imagine?"

Joan sighs.  She turns and sets her mug in the sink, using the motion to school her features as blank she can make them.  "Why are you showing your artwork if you're not even going to go to the opening?"

"Who is to say that I won't?"

"Will Beaufort, for one.  But also Elise Parker's unfortunate habit of doing just that for all of her openings."  Joan lets a smile drift across her lips; it's not one that she feels.  "You've no need to sell art, and while I know you love to show off, this..." she shrugs, makes a dismissive gesture.  "This doesn't seem like the best venue to showcase your talents."

"Would you rather I broke into the Met and put up my forgeries instead?"  It's said with a raised eyebrow and Joan feels her jaw clench, the line in her cheek a hard line.

"No," Joan answers stubbornly.  "You're better than that gallery.  Everyone knows that your best work isn't painted."

"Oh, you want me to murder Will Beaufort, because you think I'm emotional about my artwork potentially being damaged and I'll go for revenge."  Moriarty's smile broadens.  She looks a particularly smug cat and Joan wants to smack the smile form her face.  "Do you want to play the game, Joan Watson?"

"I have no interest in your games."

"You've offered me one, served it up on a silver platter.  I should take it; I'd love to match my wits against yours once more.  You are terribly clever, Joan, it'd be good for me."

"I'll catch you."

"I've no doubt, you and Sherlock found me out under an alias I was almost certain would slip undetected through the city."  Moriarty runs a hand through her hair, an almost rueful expression drifting across her face so quickly that Joan thinks she have blinked and missed the true intent of the look.  "Such is the price of vanity, I suppose."  She taps her chin with one finger, chin resting on her palm.  "I had a great deal of time to paint while in prison, seems a shame to never display all of that art."

She holds out her empty cup to Joan, who takes it and puts it in the sink. There is a moment of silence and it feels as suffocating as they do with Sherlock these days, harsh and oppressive.  They're full of things that need to be said and crushed by the weight of the words that seek to express them.

"I shan't leave you tonight."

Joan turns, staring openly at her, not bothering to hide her shock.  "Why not?"

"You protected me, Joan, when you had no reason to.  I should return the favor, at least until I can ensure that Mr. Beaufort won't be bothering either of us again."  Joan scowls and Moriarty laughs.  "I am not without contacts within the American agencies, Joan.  I'm sure if I were to call up my friend at the NSA that they would jump at the opportunity for a chance to question an assassin employed by the Corsicans.  Doubly so if I risk MI-6."

"In exchange for what?"  Joan asks.  "Everything comes with a price with you."

She leans down and touches the monitoring anklet.  "This place be struck from their records.  I don't want them thinking we're known to each other any more than the official story says.  That simply wouldn't do."  Joan inhales sharply before she can catch herself, and she finds herself meeting Moriarty's gaze evenly.  Moriarty is watching her, probably assessing her for any form of weakness.  "I've shocked you."

Joan shakes her head. "I... suppose -- I wasn't expecting it."

Moriarty's head tilts to one side.  "You are worth the concessions I've had to make, Joan.  Keeping you safe and away from those who might deem fit to hurt you has always been a priority of mine.  As keeping me safe is apparently one of yours."

A snort of laughter escapes Joan before she can hold it back.  "I'm not your knight in shining armor."

"I suppose that would be rather cumbersome, wouldn't it?"  She leans forward, chin still resting in her palm, a smile dancing across her lips that seems genuinely amused.  "You would look dashing, though.  In proper armor."

Joan rolls her eyes.  It isn't worth it to rise to the verbal bait or the rather blatant flirting.  And since when was that a thing?  Joan has no interest in even beginning to unpack whatever it is that Moriarty is playing at with her charming smile and batting eyelashes.  Joan's pretty sure that it's nothing more than a ploy to have her distracted from the fact that Will Beaufort is going to end up dead before the night is out.

She moves through the apartment, finding a pillow and a blanket, even though Moriarty insists that she won't be sleeping.  "I've been working at the gallery every night for weeks now, Joan; sleep won't come until morning, even if I were to try."  She drifts over to the bookshelf, the one thing that Joan has bothered to set up and make nice in this too-uncomfortable apartment, and contemplates it for a long time.

There isn't anything particularly embarrassing in that bookshelf.  She keeps the romance novels and chick-lit her mother and Oren's girlfriend give her in her bedroom; anything that that could add fuel to Moriarty's fire isn't worth it to Joan, right now. Especially since she apparently isn't going away until the morning.

What Moriarty draws from the shelf is unexpected.  It's a battered old copy of _The Martian Chronicles_ that her father had given to her during one of his periods of lucidity that Joan's never had the heart to throw away.  There's an inscription on the inside cover in Mandarin.  Her mother's told her what it says many times, and the words rattle around in Joan's mind even now.  Moriarty opens the book and accepts the pillow and blanket from Joan wordlessly.  She says nothing about the inscription, but Joan's sure she can and has read it.

"I had a love affair with the stars when I was a child."

"It was either that or horses, right?"  And no, Joan isn't joking with this woman, it isn't happening.  It's as natural as breathing and it's unsettling to Joan.  It seeps through her, the urge to smile, to make light of this bizarre situation.  This half-solved case and the confrontation with Sherlock that is sure to come in the morning.

"No, I had that phase too.  Most girls do." Moriarty closes the book and rests it on her lap.  "Did you?"

Joan shakes her head.  "I never liked horses," she confesses.  They scared her as a child when she'd see cops riding them in the park.  They were too big, too nervous, too flighty.  "I preferred the big cats."

(There is a stuffed lion in her bedroom that's as old as she is.  Another sentiment that she's never quite managed to force herself to throw away.)

"You prefer predators to prey.  How _interesting_."

"I'm going to bed," Joan says, before Moriarty can drift down that rabbit hole.  Of course she would think of it that way, rather than just a childish love of Oliver and Company that Joan's never been able to let go of.  "Don't -" she glances around at her sparsely decorated space.  "Steal anything."

Moriarty gives her a mock-offended look, eyes wide and innocent.  "I would _never_."

Joan goes to bed feeling oddly safer and more at ease than she's felt in weeks.  Perhaps she's missed quiet sounds of someone moving about in the space beyond her bedroom door.  Moriarty respects her privacy; she doesn't burst in with breakfast or Clyde.  Joan finds her blinking blearily at a cup of coffee, nose buried in _The Martian Chronicles_ in at nine-thirty that morning.

"Sherlock called your phone," Moriarty says, pushing it towards Joan.  "William Beaufort was dropped off at the 11th Precinct this morning and has made a full confession to the break-ins at the gallery.  Apparently Elise Parker's work is quite well-known in somewhat unsavory circles and he has connections - who knew what sort of sway they pulled.  The NSA and CIA are fighting over him, according to some chatter Sherlock heard."

"You listened to my voicemail?"  Joan asks, tugging her sweater more closely around herself and scowling. She’s ignoring the comment from Moriarty about the prominence of her own work, she doesn’t want to know.

Moriarty shakes her head, not even bothering to look affronted. Tiredness seeps into her person and makes her look soft at the edges.  She's shed her smock and is curled up under the blanket, perches on the stool at the kitchen island.  "No, I answered it after the third call in short succession.  He was a little alarmed, but once I explained the situation he calmed down significantly."

"And we are not discussing how you've framed Will Beaufort for your break-ins to the gallery?"  Joan asks, sending Sherlock a text confirming that no, Moriarty did not murder her in her sleep, and yes, what she'd told him was the truth.

"No," Moriarty wrinkles her nose at the mention of the man who'd shot at her.  "We are not.  I'd like to keep showing under this alias, if it's all the same to you, Joan."

"So, you'll what, go back to skulking around the gallery at night?  Just introduce yourself to Kathryn Hannoy as Elise Parker so that we can call this case closed.  I'm certainly not going to blow your cover." She folds her arms over her chest and regards Moriarty.

Moriarty meets her gaze evenly, and then slides off the stool.  She folds the blanket neatly and hands it back to Joan.  "Best get dressed then, Watson, if I'm to spend the morning playacting, I demand your company."

For the comment Joan doesn't offer her a shower or breakfast, but she comes back ten minutes later to find that Moriarty has helped herself to a clean shirt from the laundry basket that she's only just noticed sitting on the coffee table.  "You... did my laundry?" she asks, not entirely how to feel about that.

Moriarty shrugs. "I didn't want to wander around your building late at night without a reason, Watson.  The laundry gave me a perfectly decent excuse to inspect the basement and evaluate its weak points."

Groaning, Joan takes the basket and heads for her bedroom, trying not to notice how neatly square everything the basket is.  Military like precision and lines.  Joan recognizes it from some of the homeless vets she speaks to when she goes down to the shelters trying to see her father.  Even years removed from the Gulf War or Vietnam, they still do it.  It's neater, they tell her, things stay straight.  It's some order out of a chaotic life.

"I want that shirt back," she calls.

"You'll get it back," Moriarty replies.  She's standing in the doorway and Joan's just in her bra.  Joan swallows, cheeks flushing, as the intensity in Moriarty's gaze grows stronger.  "I'd like to paint you, Joan."

"You already have."

"From life, not my own insufficient memory."  Moriarty shakes her head ruefully.  "You have a very symmetrical face, Joan.  It would be an honor to paint it."

Joan tugs a shirt on quickly before this conversation can get any more awkward. She doesn't want Moriarty to paint her again.  The first time was enough to make Joan worried, any more and Joan's certain, she's certain that whatever fascination Moriarty has with her will turn into an obsession.

And that is the last thing anyone in their lives needs.

Very little is said as they gather their things and head back towards the gallery.  Sherlock's texting Joan every five minutes demanding to know where she is.  Joan eventually texts him that she's on her way and tugs her headphones from her purse and jams them into her ears as she stands beside Moriarty and waits for the train to come.  They'd run a lot further than Joan had thought last night, and the train would be significantly faster.

She listens to the quiet beat of some Daughter remix she'd found online for a few minutes before Moriarty's curious expression has her tugging out an earbud.  "What?" she asks, headphone caught between two fingers.

Moriarty takes the earbud and puts it into her ear. "I'd never had cause to think about what you might enjoy listening to."

It's a lie, but Joan allows it.  "I wear these headphones running," she says instead.  "They're probably gross."

"I don't mind."  It's said with a flirtatious bat of eyelashes, but it comes off as creepy and Joan shifts away, until the headphone tugs in her ear and she sighs loudly.  Moriarty changes the song.

They end up sitting next to each other, Moriarty inspecting her playlists with a curious expression on her face.  Joan doesn’t particularly mind it, because she knows a far bigger secret of Moriarty's after all.  It's oddly intimate, though, and Moriarty's inability to listen to just one song for longer than thirty seconds is starting to grate on her nerves as they arrive at the station that's a block up from the gallery.

Sherlock is on the platform in just a t-shirt, looking like he's run the whole way from the gallery.  He's not wearing sneakers, and Joan doesn't envy his shin splints for running in his usual, more formal shoes.  Joan hasn't tugged her earbud back from Moriarty when he catches sight of them and starts towards them.  She can feel Moriarty tense beside her, and Joan rests a placating hand on her lower arm and tries to pull the earbud away as discretely as possible.

"I hadn't expected an escort," Moriarty grumbles as he draws level with them.

"I hadn't expected you to abscond with my Watson all night."  He replies, equally grumbly.

Joan closes her eyes and prays for patience.  They've talked about this.  They've talked about this multiple times.  He is possessive of her when he should not be.  She is not his and she has never been.  They don't have that kind of relationship.  It is because of things like this that she'd left in the first place.  And she's made it very clear that it can't go back to that if they're going to continue working together.

"Sherlock, Joan is her own person," Moriarty says, and Joan turns and stares at her.  Moriarty catches her gaze and there's a little flirty smile that drifts across her face.  Joan bites the inside of her cheek to keep from groaning.  "She can decide to spend a night with whomever she likes."

His eyebrows shoot up and Joan actually does groan then, quietly and behind her hand while glaring at them both.  Moriarty gives a little humorless laugh and Sherlock looks uncomfortable.

"We are to call you Elise, then?"

"I'm glad you've accepted to my terms."

Sherlock shrugs.  "They were reasonable."

Eyes narrowing, Joan stares at Sherlock.  What had he bargained for?  He, of all people, should have known better than to make a deal with Moriarty. He should have known.

Moriarty walks ahead and Sherlock looks almost guiltily at Joan as they fall into step beside her.  "What did you give her?" she hisses through clenched teeth, knowing full-well that Moriarty can hear every word she's saying.

"I promised to leave Elise Parker out of this, she offered Will Beaufort's knowledge of the Corsican Milieu to my NSA contact."  Sherlock jams his hands into his pockets.  Joan hates admitting that Sherlock's right, they were reasonable terms.  She doesn't want to be entangled with Moriarty.  Not even for something as innocent as protecting her ability to show her work.  "We might be able to get you my brother back."

"I don't want him."  Joan replies automatically.  She's tried to explain to him why the events that led up to Mycroft's abrupt departure from their lives were completely and utterly unacceptable to her.  She could never be that woman and Mycroft had used her as a tool and nothing more.  She had tried to save a man only to have him die before her eyes.  She had tried to hold it together when she was falling apart and she'd ended up doing the one thing she should not have done.

The scars of that encounter will take years to heal and Joan doesn't think that she'll ever find it in herself to forgive Mycroft.  The anger, the righteous rage that she feels just thinking about what he'd done and how he'd not even thought - not even bothered to set her free when all was said and done.  Even now, even full of the upsetting, unsettling feeling of having somehow she thought she could love completely disregard her emotions in a moment of crisis; Joan can't help but compare him to how she is sure that Sherlock or hell, even Moriarty, would have reacted in such a situation.

Sherlock had sworn to her once that no harm would come to her.  It was a pie crust sort of a promise, easily made and easily broken.  He'd never hurt her directly, and Joan doesn't think that Moriarty would have either.

Mycroft had known she would be hurt.  He'd known and he'd done it anyway.

Joan's therapist is having a field day with these new emotions.  She's full of secret, barely disguised glee that Joan's moved out of the brownstone and that she's putting some distance between herself and Sherlock.  Joan understands why it might seem weird, might seem like they'd become codependent.  And maybe they had.  Moriarty had called them incestuous.  She might have had a point.

"Be that as it may," Sherlock says, hunching his shoulders forward and taking the steps up to the street three at a time.  "No one should have to live in hiding."

As much as Joan wants to argue with him, she knows he's right.  She may not want to see Mycroft, but she doesn't want him to be forced to hide himself away from the world either.  It doesn't suit him.

Sherlock's pace picks up almost as Moriarty's pace slows down, and she and Sherlock trade places beside Joan wordlessly.  "Do you find my terms agreeable, Joan?" she asks.

Joan shrugs.  "They're fine."  She doesn't want to say that she doesn't trust Moriarty when she says that 'nothing untoward' has happened to Will Beaufort, or when she says that all she wants to do is show her work.  The art isn't the point, the point is something else, something that Joan hasn't put together yet.

Kathryn Hannoy is standing on the gallery's front steps, watching as a gaggle of CSU guys photograph and document the break in.  "This won't take long, will it?" she asks Sherlock when he climbs up the steps, hands still jammed in his pockets.  She's worrying on a battered looking pen with her teeth.  "The opening is only a week and a half away and while the glass is covered by insurance, an investigation could..."  she trails off, catching sight of Moriarty in her borrowed shirt and paint streaked jeans, smock half jammed into her purse.

"This is Elise Parker," Sherlock says, indicating Moriarty with a pinched look on his face.  It probably looks normal to most people, but Joan's adept at reading his moods and knows that this lie is hard to tell and harder still for him to stomach.  "We found her last night after we caught wind of your sometimes business partner attempting to steal her work."

"Oh!" Kathryn Hannoy tucks her pen behind her ear and smiles broadly.  "I wasn't aware that you were stateside."  She holds out her hand, expectant.

Joan watches Moriarty, watches how she tenses and wants to turn away.  Moriarty is a lot like Sherlock in all of the worst ways, and Joan wonders if there is a chance that she will react as he does, rude and brutally to the point in all social interaction.

Moriarty's eyebrows furrow slightly, but she relaxes quickly, a charming smile slipping across her face.  It is dull, blank.  Not like the smiles Joan had earned the night before.  A public smile, one that betrays nothing.  Joan finds that she hates it and hates what it stands for.  "I got in two days ago; it's hectic, being back in New York." Her American accent has improved, it's nearly flawless when before it lacked something that Joan was never able to put her finger on until she'd found out that Irene Adler wasn't American at all.  Moriarty's put on an inflection that puts her growing up in the Upper East Side if Joan were to guess what she's going for, it suits her.  "I hadn't gotten down here to introduce myself.  I trust that my work arrived safely."

"Yes, the night staff-" and there's this little panicked look that comes over Kathryn Hannoy's face as she lies blatantly, she has no idea who’s doing the set up. Moriarty’s lips curl upwards into a sly, smug smile.  "-has started to do the set-up, if you'd like to see."

"I would."

-

It becomes a daily thing, meeting at the gallery.  Joan goes because she wants to keep an eye on Moriarty, because she doesn't trust her at all.  But it's so ... deceptively normal, the setting up of a show.  There's a lot of Joan holding a level and Moriarty climbing up on step ladders and stools, twisting around to get the angle of each piece just right.  She'd rearranged the presentation of the art three times before she'd announced her satisfaction with the set up.  Leaning back on the battered heels of her canvas sneakers, the monitoring anklet sticking out like a sore thumb against her leggings, Moriarty surveys the gallery like it’s her kingdom.  "I like them like this," she says.

Joan tilts her head to one side.  The ocean at midwinter piece that she'd liked so much is towards the front of the gallery, visible from the street, enough to entice a potential viewer inside.  Moriarty's caught Joan more than once, staring at the image.  There's something about it that echoes at the back of Joan's mind, something that is screaming at her to distrust this truth, to distrust everything about this.  Joan can't put her finger on it.  It is paranoia, she thinks, because neither of them really _know_ Moriarty and they're both so quick to assume that she is the evil, mustache twirling type of nemesis.

(Well, Sherlock is, Joan thinks she'd never go so far as to actually twirl her mustache à la Professor Fate, but she's keeping her opinion to herself.  Sherlock needs to talk about what Moriarty did to him as much as possible to help those wounds to heal.  So ranting about how she's evilly twirling her mustache to the while laughing all the way to the bank over dinner seems reasonable to Joan.  To a point, it's getting a little old.)

This goes on until Joan is called in by the DA to go over testimony with Marcus and Moriarty doesn't bother to call her or text that she wants company down at the gallery as she continues to set up and prepare.  An invitation for the opening arrives for Joan, but Sherlock is noticeably not invited to it.

"That's fine," he says when Joan shows it to him, a few hours before the opening.  "You should go, Joan. It is an obvious slight, meant to hurt me."

"Maybe she knew you wouldn't want to go?" Joan suggests.  The invitation for companionship had been extended to them both, like Moriarty had wanted to prove to them both that she wasn’t up to anything other than what was obvious.  Joan hadn't pushed it when Sherlock had begged off, saying that he was too busy and that if Moriarty was up to anything, Joan would be a better judge of it that he could ever possibly be.

Sherlock's shoulders hunch forward and he scowls, taking the invitation from her and regarding at the handwritten note at the top.

_'I would be honored if you came - J'_

"She's upgraded you to first names?"

"It's a little awkward spending multiple hours a day with someone and avoiding calling them by name," Joan shakes her head.  "Jamie just sounds so pedestrian."

"If it even is her real name.  I've long suspected that it's just another alias, the name Moriarty."

"I don't think it is," Joan answers, touching his shoulder and pushing it back, knowing that he's hunching because he wants to curl in on himself to shut the world out.  She smoothes the muscles in his neck over his shirt.  "And I won't push you if you don't want to come."

"Give her my regrets.  Murderers out in the wild actually committing murder, not putting on art shows."

A little laugh escapes Joan's lips and she leans against him.  This sort of companionship, the easy intimacy that they both crave, it comes as naturally to her as breathing.  She can give him this, she will always give him this, but she cannot keep sacrificing her sanity in response.  The distance, the empty apartment with its bookshelves and comfortable couch are enough to establish it and it's wonderful.  They're healing, together, from what Mycroft did to them both.

"I got a call from our friend at the NSA," Sherlock says.  "Will Beaufort didn't know much about his employers.  He did contract work, they said, for whomever could afford him.  They hired him based on reputation, probably, got his name from someone he done work for in the past."  He makes a fist and stares down at it, the lines of the tattoos on his forearm twisting and surging, distorting the image.  "Another dead end."

"But is it?" 

"I don't know, maybe.  The Corsicans are after Moriarty, that's interesting."  He tilts his head to one side.  "What do you think it means?"

"That in all this, Moriarty is a neutral third party," Joan ticks off the facts on her fingers.  "That they're after Moriarty for something, or maybe just after her alias.  That they're not sending their people here, which means that they're attempting to avoid attracting the attention of either British Intelligence, the NSA or Moriarty, possibly all three."

"Why do you include Moriarty in that number?"  Sherlock asks, even though the answer is obvious to them both.  They both have a healthy fear of what Moriarty can do when motivated.  Despite her boast of being a spider, of never doing much on her own, she'd gutted three of her own people and shot countless others just to save a little girl that she'd never allowed herself to know.  She's dangerous, and unpredictable.  And she, unlike the NSA or MI-6, seemed willing to act with a ruthless efficiency that terrifies Joan.

"Because, like it or not, New York is a city that her organization is deeply entrenched in.  She's established here, even if she's been out of the loop and is laying low right now.  She will protect what she considers her's with violence if need be.  We've seen that happen before."  Joan sighs, hating that she doesn’t particularly blame the violence that Moriarty had wrought on her people for what they’d done to Kayden Fuller.  She knows that she should, but she understands, and thinks that Moriarty was justified to go after them.  She just wishes it hadn’t been so bloody – so violent.  Moriarty had done things to that man, things with a pocket knife, having lost a great deal of blood.  She’d been able to murder so cruelly, so efficiently, even then.  It was terrifying.  "I should go to this opening, I'm curious if she'll actually show up."

Sherlock makes a humming noise at the back of his throat but nods his agreement.  "I'll leave my phone on, in case you need to call.”

Joan nods her agreement and moves to leave.  He doesn't try to stop her, but there's a haunted look about him as he moves back into the house after walking her to the door.  _Stay_ , his body language says again and again, and Joan knows that she cannot.  Not yet, maybe not ever.

It's been years since Joan has had a function like this to go to.  She doesn't know how to dress and calls Ms. Hudson and when she's got no advice, tries Emily, who tells her to go naked as a joke.  Joan rolls her eyes and gets a real suggestion out of her with only minimal needling: a dress they'd bought out shopping together a few months ago.  "It isn't too hot today, so wear a shawl or something." Emily adds as Joan's in the process of getting her off of the phone.  "And those black shoes of yours."

"They've got a huge heel, Em; I wouldn't be able to run."

"Why the hell'd you be running?"  Emily laughs.  "You could score some hot single art collector and he could solve all of your love problems."

"Or she," Joan says distractedly.

"Oh, you're admitting that now?"

Exhaling, Joan feels herself smiling enough though Em is all the way across town at work.  "Maybe I've just dated such a shitty array of guys recently that I want to swear off men for a while."

"Oh right," Emily chuckles into the phone.  "Does this have anything to do with that hot blonde that Ash saw you with last weekend down by your new place?"

"Ash?"  Joan runs her hand though her hair.  She hasn't seen Ashley in years, since she'd quit the hospital.  Ash hadn't taken her leaving very well at all and they haven’t spoken since.  "God, how is she?  I haven't talked to her in years."

"Good, very curious about you, but good."  Emily’s smile is evident in her voice, but Joan can’t help but shift uncomfortably at the thought of such a thing ever happening.  She can’t ever even consider letting it happen.  “So who is she?”

“Sherlock’s ex.”

“And you’re going for it?  Damn Joanie, I had no idea you had it in you.”

“I’m not _going for it,_ Em.  She’s--” Joan trails off, not entirely sure what she’d call Moriarty if offered the chance to attempt to explain their relationship.  Ideas like compulsive book borrower, shirt stealer, _nemesis_. They come so easily, but really, they have something that could be called a friendship.  Moriarty murders people for a living; she destroys lives when it was Joan’s job, once, to rebuild them.  They are diametrically opposed on so many levels, and yet the ease at which they’ve settled into working around each other alarms Joan. 

Moriarty is an amazing actress, yes, but there is nothing about this performance that feels put-on.  She truly does, it seems, just want to know Joan.  The thought of that alone is terrifying.  Joan isn’t sure that she wants Moriarty to know her.  Not the way that Moriarty wants at any rate.

She’s preparing one last piece, a ‘big reveal’ she’s told Joan.  It’ll be up tonight, but Joan has yet to see it.  She didn’t mention it to Sherlock because it would have made him want to come and make sure that Moriarty wasn’t up to anything.  Maybe it’s that that has Joan so worried about tonight, worried about the opening, curious if Moriarty will even go.  She almost wants to see her, to dress to impress her to prove that she can move through the world that Moriarty occupies so easily.

“She’s not really my type,” Joan finishes lamely.  “She messed Sherlock up pretty good and I don’t think he’d ever forgive me if I did something like that.  I could never forgive myself for doing it, either.”

Emily is quiet for a long time.  “Wear the hot shoes, Joan.  Impress her.  From what Ash said, she’s totally into you.  Even if you can’t do it, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the attention for a little while.  It’s not like you and Sherlock are dating or something.” 

 _Except that I can’t want that, or even allow it to happen._ One little slip-up and Joan knows that this whole game that Moriarty is playing with her will suddenly become a lot more real.  She’s allowed the tentative friendship, the request for her presence because those are harmless. She’s let Moriarty borrow her books because she gives them back, but she’ll never loan her another shirt.  She’s… tried to avoid anything that could be read incorrectly because she doesn’t want to encourage it to be read incorrectly in the first place.  Moriarty trades on assumptions, on stereotypes and on everything else that Joan hates about society.  She can’t allow those assumptions even begin to ring true.

 “I suppose…” Joan sighs, because Emily means well, and Joan can’t very way say ‘oh by the way Em, this chick that I’m telling you about, I know her to have killed at least five people and injured countless more.’ Emily wouldn’t understand.  She wouldn’t understand why as much as Joan can’t allow Moriarty to become that close, she can’t exactly turn her away.  Turning her away would mean something else entirely.  Despite all of her better angels screaming at her to do just that, Joan doesn’t think she can let Moriarty go.  The friendship that’s been offered is fraught with danger, yes, but it is also, oddly, something that Joan wants.   “Look,” she adds, “I’ll call you later.”

“Well, don’t call me if you’re busy with _other things_.” Emily emphasizes the word the point where Joan’s cheeks burn.  She cannot even imagine such a thing. 

Okay, maybe she can, and that thought is even more disturbing than the idea of Emily entertaining it - or long-lost once-friends deciding that was totally a thing that was happening based on one observed moment across a street.  Moriarty has her appeal, her easy with words that has Joan both knowing that she's a liar and feeling oddly compelled to believe everything she says. The idea of ever acting on that needling feeling of attraction that stabs at the pit of her stomach sometimes when she's holding up a painting, Moriarty rocking back on her heels in a way that is so similar and  yet so different to Sherlock is absurd.  Joan wants no part in it, and her mind and body are traitorous when Moriarty leans too close, when Emily suggests such things.

She would never...

She says her goodbyes and dresses quickly.  She doesn't want to be late, but she's not entirely sure why she's hurrying.  Moriarty probably won't even go.

"Why wouldn't you go?" Joan had asked Moriarty, sitting across from her at what was quickly becoming Joan's favorite restaurant near her new apartment.  It was a Mediterranean place, flavorful and just distracting enough to let Joan forget that she's sitting across from Sherlock's ex and that they have an unfortunate habit of having tense conversations in settings just like this.  At least no one's threatening anyone, yet.

Moriarty had shrugged, sipping at her wine and flashing Joan a smile that Joan is sure is meant to be indulgent.  "Where's the fun in that?"  She'd set her wineglass down then, reaching across the table to touch Joan's fingers where they rest beside her half-finished plate.  "I must continue the mystery of Elise Parker, after all."

"Seems a silly reason."  Joan hadn't pulled her hand away.  "You like to show off."

"I do."  It’s a bit of a shock that she'd admit it.  Joan was about to call her on her honesty, but Moriarty had continued, "Not that it is particularly hard when one possesses an intellect like mine."

"Your ego truly knows no bounds."

They'd lapsed into silence then, Moriarty's fingers warm and steady on Joan's palm.  In retrospect, Joan should have pulled her hand away; she should have made an effort to make this not seem like a date.  She should have done a lot of things differently.  "I have other reasons for keeping my distance from this event, Joan."

"You think they'll try again."

"Perhaps. It is difficult to discern their motive at this point in time.  William Beaufort proved fruitless and I've had no time to examine the situation with the care it requires."

"Please, you multitask better than anyone I know."

Moriarty's lips had quirked up into a small, private sort of smile.  The smile that she reserved for when she was genuinely amused or flattered.  It was in the moments like this that Joan found herself starting to understand the woman beneath the mask.  The staring, sneering monster and the woman that sometimes pushed past that creature to remind Joan that no matter how terrifying and monolithic Moriarty appeared, she was still human, same as the rest of them.  She just hid it belter.  "I don't want the art to be damaged, should they come again."

"The art."

"Well yes, and I suppose the people too."

Joan had rolled her eyes.  "Jamie," she'd said seriously.  "I was planning on going to the opening."

"All the more reason to stay away.  I'll not put you in danger, Joan."

Joan shakes her head, thinking of how Moriarty had looked in that moment as she gathers her things and heads out into the warm summer evening.  Emily had been right, she didn't need a sweater, but she's sure she'll be grateful for the wrap she's brought before the night is out.  Moriarty is oddly dedicated to the idea of keeping her safe, making a point of pointing it out as regularly as she can.  Sherlock says that it's her way of trying to lull Joan into a false sense of security, so she can be the one who hurts Joan in the end.  He may be right, too, but it's a far nicer feeling than being left in the dark by someone who'd only said he'd offered complete honesty.

Maybe she is being naive for going, but there is a pull in the art, and she wants to see it fully.

The gallery itself, when Joan arrives some twenty minutes later, is full of people.  Kathryn Hannoy is in a pale blue dress that sets off her pale skin and yellow hair nicely, even if it makes her look somewhat washed out under the warm gallery lights.  The people here are not who Joan would have expected. They are some upper crust of society that she's never even heard of - clustering around the paintings and staring up at them with much of the same wonder that Joan had upon first seeing them.

"She's very good," someone behind Joan is saying, “Odd that not many people have heard of her.  I heard her show in London did very well as well but that she didn’t show for the opening.  I wonder if we’ll get to see her.”

Joan turns, catching sight of the newest addition to the show.  The final painting is set off to one side, in an alcove beyond the main gallery floor.  She's standing at the perfect angle to catch the corner of it, and she pauses.  Moriarty had said that she'd done a few portraits other than the one of Joan, during her imprisonment, but that none of them had been good enough to show. 

This, though, this is not quite a portrait.

Joan skirts around some woman with a loud Boston accent and heads into the alcove.  No one appears to have noticed this piece, or that the alcove itself exists at all.  Joan stands alone before an image of a blurry park, trees skirting around the edges of the skyline and almost drowning out the bits of blue and white that filter through at the top and right of the image.  Off in the distance a figure is standing, eyes cast upwards to the heavens.  Joan stares at that figure for a long time, admiring how the paint curls around and makes that figure seem larger than life, even at a distance.

In the foreground of the image there is a bench and a woman, her legs curled up under her, shoes discarded on the ground before her.  A book is on her lap.  Even though her face is pointing away, into the painting and towards the figure in the distance, Joan knows that it is her.  The thought is jarring, sending Joan a spiral of questioning thoughts and filing her with a burning curiosity.  She must know more, she must know why.

"Ms. Watson!" Kathryn Hannoy has appeared in the alcove, pulling Joan from her thoughts.  The light is lower here, and Kathryn doesn't so washed out.  "I wasn't sure that you were going to come.  Elise... didn't say when she dropped this off earlier."

"She's not here, is she?"

"No," Kathryn shakes her head.  "If I didn't know better I'd say that she prefers to be a ghost."

"Or a god," Joan muses.  Her eyes are back on the painting.

"Come again?"

"Never mind."  Joan says quickly, not wanting to explain that particular comparison to Kathryn.  "I'm glad you have this alcove, this piece doesn’t really match, does it?"

"No, but Elise was insistent that you see it.  Said you'd understand."  Kathryn shrugs. "I wish she'd've come."

"I'm sure she had her reasons."  Like in the windswept beach at midwinter, there is a violence about this piece, despite its idyllic subject matter.  Joan thinks it is in the way that the black is worked into the shadows of the trees, creeping into the warm, inviting browns and greens that form the barrier of the painting.

Her eyes narrow, looking at the black strokes, at the way they face certain directions, at the way they curl.

"Son of a bitch," she mutters.

"Sorry?"

"It's nothing - do you have a pen?"  Joan turns her gallery guide over to the blank back page.  Kathryn hands her a pen from her clutch and Joan takes it from her and turns back to the painting.  The black marks that look so sinister have meaning.  Son of a bitch.

She counts the marks, writes down the letter.  Counts the marks, checks the message.  It was just like before, like before with Kayden Fuller...

Kathryn has disappeared, but she's come back by the time Joan's finished writing it down.

"Elise left something for you, when she brought that painting."  She passes a small gift bag with tissue paper sticking out of the top to Joan who takes it distractedly, still counting and writing down letters.  An evolving horror is pressing into her subconscious, the feeling of being duped.

Joan's heart is hammering in her chest as she stares down at the message.

_'catch me if you can'_

The program is shaking in Joan's hand as she sticks the pen into her hair and pulls open the gift bag.  Inside, beautifully arranged against white tissue, is the electronic monitoring anklet that has been so conspicuous on Moriarty's ankle during the past two weeks.

She'd wanted a game.

Joan's lips pull upwards into an almost hysterical smile, for underneath the monitoring anklet is the shirt that had been borrowed but never returned.

She'd wanted a goddamn game.

"Fine," Joan breathes.  "Fucking fine." She hands a bewildered Kathryn Hannoy back her pen.  She had to look at the other paintings.  Now that she saw the pattern, she had to call Sherlock.  She had to...

She stumbles into someone maybe an inch or two taller than her in these heels, and warm hands close on her shoulders to steady her.  "Do you like it?" a voice breathes in her ear and Joan looks up, startled.

Moriarty is standing there.  Not Jamie, not the woman that she'd come to know, but Moriarty.  She is pulled on knife's edge, her expression cold and her eyes like steel.  Her face betrays no emotion at all as Kathryn Hannoy makes an excited noise behind her and scurries forward.  "You made it!"

Elise's voice, especially from Moriarty's lips is bizarre.  "I did, thank you, Kathryn."  Her tone is icy, a dismissal.

"I'll just...." Kathryn scoots out of the alcove.  Joan watches her go and steps back, just once.  In her hand is the program and the message.  The taunting gesture, the confusion at Moriarty's presence.

"Why are you here?" Joan frowns, tugging on the wrap around her shoulders.  She's suddenly cold, the temperature feels like it's dropped several degrees.

Moriarty's eyes narrow.  "You've figured it out.  Good."  She holds out her hand to Joan.  "You need to leave."

"What?  Why?"  Even though she knows better, she is reaching forward, shoving the program into the gift bag.  Her fingers close around Moriarty's hand and it's sweaty, nervous.  It betrays her calm exterior and sets Joan's heart hammering in her chest once more.  Something is wrong here, something isn't right.

Pulling her forward, into personal space that Moriarty invades effortlessly but that Joan has always been hesitant to broach, Moriarty lets out the faintest breath of a sigh.  "I hadn't meant for it to be like this, Joan, you must understand that."

Joan looks down at the gift bag in her hand, at the promise of the painting and the annoyance she'd felt at Moriarty's gesture.  "You meant to play a game."

A humorless smile greets her when she looks up to meet Moriarty's gaze evenly.  "I had, yes.  Now I find that the hand we've been dealt is far too dangerous."

"Le Milieu?"

"Perhaps.  Someone contacted one of my regular employees and offered them a contract on Elise Parker.  As this man is known to me personally, he sought me out, recognizing the art."  Moriarty shakes her head.  Her jacket has slipped and Joan can see the gun, tucked into the small of her back in a shoulder holster.  It doesn't make her feel any better.  "I can only think that his turning down the job spurred them to try once more, probably someone sloppier, one who isn't afraid of casualties."

Joan bites her lip, feeling helpless and almost disturbingly worried for Moriarty - for Jamie.  Never for this woman, for this mask of blank indifference that Joan can never be sure is truly the person or the mask.  There's no telling, Moriarty has a serpent’s tongue and her lies are flawless.  "Is this retribution for Will Beaufort?"

"No."

The same helpless feeling that Joan felt at Mycroft’s restaurant, staring at Mycroft as known gangsters conducted business in his dining room; knowing that he was lying to her about so much, wells up within Joan.  She swallows hotly, eyes narrowing.  She takes a step forward, into Moriarty's personal space, and dates her to act.  "Are you going to tell me what it is for?"

Moriarty appears to debate it, just for a moment.  She turns away, stepping forward to stand before the painting, the beautiful painting that Joan finds so haunting.  "I had hoped to avoid this."

"You won't lie to me."

"Darling, you shouldn't believe anything I tell you."  Moriarty wraps her arms around herself, her lips twisting downwards and the mask slipping, fading.  "The Corsicans has been aware of my... incarceration for some time.  Probably because of Mycroft Holmes and his rekindled relationship with Sherlock.  How they connected Elise Parker with me is anyone's guess."  She turns then, looking at Joan, her face blank and oddly open.  "You took much from me when you beat me at my own game."

She's mentioned it a few times, making sure Joan knows just what it had cost Moriarty to have her identity, her perfectly guarded secret, stolen and thrust out into the open.  "I would do it again," Joan says without hesitation.

Moriarty moves back to her in three quick and easy steps, her eyes creasing at the corners and a cat-like smile drifting across her face.  "I know," she says, and she's too close, far too close.  It's like Sherlock only it isn't.  The contact is there when he would hesitate.  Joan takes a step backwards, her back hitting the blank white wall of the alcove.  She stands there; feeling trapped, and waits for Moriarty to advance, to do the deep that they've been dancing around.  Joan can't want it, she doesn't want it.

But Moriarty stays put.  "You are endlessly fascinating Joan Watson, and I'd love another game.  Unfortunately," she turns and glances at the painting on the wall, an almost rueful smile on her face.  "This one's all bollocksed up."

"You weren't expecting me to chase you, were you?"

"I was."

"Where were you going?"

"Paris.  I wanted to hear your French."

Joan rolls her eyes.  "Do we need to get the people out of here?"

Moriarty nods.  "I cannot make any guarantees, but it would be for the best."  She tilts her head to one side, contemplating Joan.  "You're not going to ask me why a French syndicate is after me?"

"No reason - you're established here, they're moving in.  Seems a reasonable enough motive, especially since you're weak right now."

"You are far too perceptive."

"I watched a lot of gangster movies as a child."

"I'm sure."  Moriarty steps forward then, fingers brushing against Joan's forearm.  Her hand tugs the gift bag full of anklet and borrowed shirt out of Joan’s hands.  She bends, lips a hair's breath from Joan's cheek.  Joan stiffens and Moriarty backs away.  "Still nothing?"

"I know you," Joan says, voice ragged.  "I couldn't."

"But you want to."

Joan looks away.

"I thought so."  Moriarty's fingers are warm on her forearm.  "I shan't stop trying."

Joan nods, feeling stretched to breaking.  She looks down at her purse, at her waiting phone.  "I do like it - the painting, I mean."

Moriarty's face cracks into a genuine smile, a beautiful smile, the sort of smile that Joan could fall in love with.  "I'm glad."

She sweeps from the alcove, fingers pulling down the fire alarm just down the hallway on her way out.  Joan stands there, drawing in a shaky breath, and then another.  She sees Moriarty making her way through the milling crowd of people heading towards the door. She sees a man, his hand in his jacket step to follow her.  She's three steps into her pursuit, her voice rising in warning.

And Moriarty turns, her eyes flinty and her lips twisted into a cruel smile.  She walks back towards the man; grabbing his hand where it's still caught up under his jacket and leaning in far too close.  Joan can't hear what she's saying, but her lips are moving and there's a vicious curl to her lip that twists that cruel smile into a sneer.  It contorts her face, makes her look murderous.

She will kill this man, Joan knows this.  She will kill and kill and kill until they stop coming for her.  This is a power grab, pure and simple.  The people in the gallery are the only reason why she hasn't acted yet. Joan swallows, knowing that she has to be the one to stop it.  She has to prevent this from ever coming to pass because if it does, Joan well send her right back to prison.

Cursing her stupid heels and Emily's terrible advice to wear them, Joan hurries forward.  Her baton is attached to her keys still, and she's twisting it to its full length almost without thinking.  The man is speaking in low, rapid French.  Joan can hear him but she cannot process the language fast enough to comprehend. He's older, not who Joan expected to be charged with such a task. She'd expected someone like Sebastian Moran, younger, working class.  Someone who would fit her mental image of a gangster.

Someone not at all like Moriarty.

The fire alarm is pounding into her head.  She raises her hand, her house key digging into her palm, and brings the baton down hard on the man's head.  The gallery is nearly empty as he crumples down to the floor.  Someone shrieks, for the man's hand had fallen from his coat, the silenced pistol that had been in his hand clattered to the floor.

Moriarty's eyes are wide as she kicks the gun away from the guy.  "This has become a habit of yours."  She bends down finger curling into a fist.  She contemplates the man on the floor, his groans just barely audible over the sound of the fire alarm.  Joan's about to open her mouth, watching with horrified eyes as Moriarty pulls her arm back and slams her fist into the man's jaw.  There's a crack, a crunching sound that Joan recognizes easily.  The sound of a bone breaking.  She'd hit him where the jaw is weakest, and she'd broken the bone.

His mouth would be wired shut for weeks.  He wouldn't be able to talk.

But why?

Joan's about to open her mouth to demand to know what the hell Moriarty is thinking, when she hears the first siren in the distance.  Moriarty bends down, pulling the man's wallet from his pocket and tucks it into her clutch.  "Get his gun," she says.

"What?"

"We need to get out of here before the police arrive, Watson, just do it."  Moriarty straightens and her lips are a thin line of concentration.

Joan uses the edges of her shawl to pick up the gun, hesitant to touch it.  "What should I do with it?  Wouldn't it be better just to leave it with him? He's out cold."

There's a moment when Moriarty stares hard at Joan, the whine of the approaching sirens and ringing of the fire alarm filling Joan's ears to the point where she can barely process a single thought.  All she knows is that she would leave the gun and leave the guy's wallet.  Slip a picture of Moriarty into it maybe; make it blatantly obvious that he's a contract killer.  They have three minutes, maybe.  If they go outside with the rest of the crowd, they can slip away.  Surely Moriarty knows this.

It isn't like the guy will be talking for some time.

"Fine, put the gun back where you found it."  There's a crease across Moriarty's forehead, and Joan is certain that she's coming to the same conclusion that Joan has.  It isn't worth it to try and deal with moving this guy's body.

Moriarty's pulling the gallery program that Joan had scribbled out the coded message out and flipping through it.  She finds the artist's biography - the lie - and rips it out, tucking it into the man's breast pocket.  She's almost resigned looking when she pulls the man's wallet out of her clutch and flips it open.  "Gerald Spanne," she mutters, and Joan catches herself wondering if she's committing it to memory.  "From Queens."

Joan nods just once and offers Moriarty the corner of her wrap to wipe down the wallet for prints as she carefully tucks it back into the man's pocket.  "Thank god for Kathryn Hannoy's insistence on replacing the windows with frosted glass," Moriarty mutters as she gathers herself and heads towards the door.  The sirens are much closer now, and Joan knows that they need to be outside and well away from the crowd by the time the fire department arrives. The crowd outside is fixated on the approaching fire trucks.  They don't seem to notice Joan and Moriarty slipping out the front door, Moriarty already on the phone with her driver.  Joan trails behind Moriarty, picking her way over the uneven and cracked sidewalk, mindful of the utter impracticality of her heels.  She's barely had time to draw level with Moriarty, a little ways away from the crowd, when a sleek black town car pulls up beside them and Moriarty moves towards the door.

"Would you allow me to drive you home?"  She asks with a small, wry sort of smile, as though the parallelism to their first meeting and the simple request for the pleasure of her company isn't lost on Joan.  Only now Joan knows that this woman is a monster, but her company is distracting and subversive.  She's charming and ruthless all at once.  Joan shouldn't say yes, but she's already stepping forward.

They settle next to each other, and Moriarty tells the driver the address and he pulls out around an oncoming van without so much a word.  Moriarty sits back in her seat, the mask slipping, falling.  The lies melting away into newer, better ones. The ones that Joan can see through but doesn't want to admit are true.  Joan watches as Moriarty tugs on the collar of her shirt, adjusting herself and looking almost weary.

"I need to take care of this, obviously." Her words come out as sounding resigned, exhausted.  Joan knows that the inflection is probably intentional, but a glance at her face has Joan doubting that.  How much as this cost her, how much has this plan falling through hurt her?  The questions rattle around in Joan's head and she follows the line of the earlier thinking - when this was just a game and not a fight.

"So you're going to Paris after all."

Moriarty makes a small sound of agreement, turning to regard Joan coolly.  Her face is held carefully blank, but she looks tired, exhausted really.  It's as though she's been spread paper thin and is barely holding all of this together.  Perhaps that is the cost of being out of the game. "It is probably better that you don't know where exactly I'm going.  Safer."

"But you'll be coming back?"

"I cannot stay away long.  As much as I'd love to leave this place, I must continue the ruse for at least another year."  She gives a little shrug, a sheepish smile that is impossibly charming and has Joan gritting her teeth to remind herself that Moriarty had broken a man's jaw with her bare hands just minutes before.  "My immunity is conditional."

Joan doesn't want to get into that.  She doesn't care, not really.  The Federal Government is collectively pretty stupid in her estimation for ever letting this woman walk free.  Gesturing to the once beautifully crafted opening gambit that now sits in the foot well by Moriarty's feet, Joan asks,  "And the anklet?"

"I'm not due to see my monitors for at least another week and a half.  This plan has been in motion for some time, Watson.  It is in its final stages." Joan draws in a slow breath of air, the little pieces slowly starting to fall into place.  Their research into Elise Parker and how she'd shown in London a little over a year ago - when Moriarty would have been prison - right after Marcus' accident.  Right after Kayden Fuller.  Joan's fingers fly to cover her lips as Moriarty continues as though she hasn't noticed the puzzle pieces slowly falling into place in Joan's head. "It will be completed by week's end."

"You're kidding me," is all Joan can think to say.

Moriarty raises an eyebrow. "I hardly ever joke."

Joan shakes her head, unable, or maybe incapable of believing that this was such a long plot.  A long game.  Orchestrated from prison where she had no contact with the outside world... no contact save showing those paintings.  "No, Jamie, really, you're kidding me." Joan shakes her head, forcing herself to think clearly and rationally.  She folds her hands in her lap, the movement distracting from the fact that they're shaking.  "You knew that this was a possibility, you practically let them know who Elise Parker was, just to see what they'd do."

"They'd grown too big for their boots, Watson; they had to be put down.  The last show, in London, I left my instructions there.  The Marshalls were none the wiser and when whisperings of what Mycroft Holmes had done to you reached my ears, I knew that the plan, already in motion, had to be seen to fruition." She looks at Joan then, really looks at her, blank and open and devoid of the mask of Moriarty, the mask of Jamie-the-artist, the mask of Elise Parker.  This is just another woman who looks at her like Sherlock does, as though somehow she holds all the answers to all the questions in the world.  Joan's pretty sure she isn't a great thinker, because the only answer she can come up with is the number forty-two and she's pretty sure that's from a book she read as a kid.

Reaching across the small space between them, Moriarty's fingers rest on Joan's forearm, warm, almost tender in the brutal sort of way a caged wild animal can show affection and yet still wish murder on it's keepers.  "I will not see you hurt."

"Jamie," Joan breathes out.  There are a million things that have gone unsaid between them.  There are terrible lies and the hurt of a thousand possibilities that Joan cannot force herself to stop entertaining.

She doesn't know what it is, but what it could be cuts her deeply and lays her bare, twisting and roiling in her stomach.

"Joan."  Moriarty's tone is firm, not mocking.  Her fingers press more instantly into Joan's arm, but Joan tugs away.  She looks out of the window, biting at her lip.  She can feel Moriarty shift back into her seat and when she next speaks, her voice is quiet, more resigned:  "Can you just trust me, just once?"

Joan shakes her head.  To do so would be suicide. "Absolutely not."

Moriarty lets out a little snort of humorless laughter.  "Smart," she says.  The car is pulling to a stop before Joan's building.  They've made good time, probably because of the late hour, and Joan suddenly doesn't want to leave.  She doesn't trust Moriarty to come back from her overseas errand.  She doesn't trust that Moriarty will come back.

She fumbles for the door handle, pulling and opening the door.  Joan scrambles from the car and she's surprised to see Moriarty get out as well.  She stands in the middle of the sidewalk in this neighborhood that is changing, but is still mostly poor, mostly minority, she looks out of place.  Something that stands out while standing in the shadows.

Joan heads towards the door before she does anything rash.  The idea of insisting that she accompany Moriarty flits, fleeting across her mind.  She is certain, if she asked, Moriarty would allow her to come along.  That had been the original plan, after all.  She wants it and yet she doesn’t want it.  She knows she should know better than to even entertain the idea.

The key in her hands misses the lock the first time, but slides in, easy and true and Joan's moving to enter when Moriarty's hand shoots out, catching the door and blocking Joan's path.  She levels a stare at Joan that Joan is pretty sure would petrify a lesser person.  Moriarty does not like to be crossed, she does not like to be beaten either, but Joan's already done that.  This is, Joan reasons, is an objection to Joan's dismissal of her plea to trust her.

Because no one is that stupid.

"Know this, Joan," she says, and her voice is insistent.  Joan can just barely hear the hint of desperation, the need to prove that this is honest, not just another lie, clearly evident in Moriarty's voice.  "I am not running away.  Not really."

Joan turns to face her.  They're so close that any illusion of personal space that they did have is shattered.  Joan can feel Moriarty's breath in her cheek, on her lips, and she wonders how that would have changed this conversation.  She cannot do it, though, not ever.  She can never allow that to happen.  "You're fleeing the country and leaving some lackey to wear your anklet and go about your routine."

Moriarty leans forward, her lip curling into a sneer that Joan doesn’t find threatening.  She looks almost desperate, and when she speaks, her voice is a low hiss.  "Would you rather I left it with you?" Stepping back, Moriarty plunges her hands into suit pant pockets, looking impossibly like and yet unlike Sherlock.  She gives an expressive shrug, her expression still murderous.  "Sort of defeats the purpose of the deal I struck with Sherlock."

"I'll tell, if you're not back here in a week."

She won't tell a soul and there's a good possibility that Moriarty knows this.  Sherlock knows of this plan, he must, why else would Moriarty insist that there was a deal, that Joan chase her across an ocean and into a place she's only been a handful of times?  Perhaps this was always the plan, on some level.  Moriarty's sold a bill of goods to someone in the government, and they've seen it fit to have her walk free.  Joan wonders, in a panicked moment of clarity, if Sherlock knows the terms of the deal.  If this is Moriarty's new purpose: a necessary evil, where she removes her competition slowly as 'favors for her freedom.'

"Business or calendar?" Moriarty asks.

Joan rolls her eyes. "Seven days."

Moriarty nods. "Fine."

"Fine," Joan agrees.

And it's then that Moriarty leans forward, back into Joan's carefully collected personal space, her breath warm and smelling of sunshine and gunpowder and something floral that Joan cannot put her finger on.  She's smelled it before, at some expensive department store in Midtown, but the name escapes her.

She's stuck, trying to recall the name of the scent, eyes half closed, when something warm and slightly wet presses to her cheek.  Moriarty's kissing her cheeks, first one, and then the other.  She comes back to the middle and Joan's about to recoil when a wide grin erupts across Moriarty's face and Joan knows that she thinks she could have gotten away with a third, more intimate kiss.  "Good bye Watson, until we meet again."

Joan stares after her, watching as she vanishes into the car and the car off into the night.

"Damn," she mutters, thinking of her shirt.  She'd get it back next time.

 

 

_When your eyes only see what you fear_

_Bring it back, the faults in your soul_

_Go easy, the fear’s a harder tide_

_You know what you can take_

_Silence Is A Gun_

**Author's Note:**

> This fic got away from me somewhat, and tries to address what I felt were some lingering issues from the end of season two. Hopefully I didn't stomp all over anyone's head canons. Special thanks to the usual suspects and most especially Alex who talked me off of a very twisted end to this story and Caroline who suggested the laundry thing.
> 
> In trying to determine the proper way to spell 'Milieu' I was linked to a wikipedia article that actually explains that milieu is a catch-all phrase meaning "...a type of criminal organization founded in France with long-standing ties to the country" [[x](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milieu_%28organized_crime_in_France%29)] As it's a catch-all term, and I figured that, you know, actual gangsters would be cool. I went looking for some dudes that would match Moriarty's MO of murder and violence, kidnapping, extortion, blackmail. The obvious answer was to have them be members of the Corsican mafia, which works, because they're still rather godfather-like ways like it was shown on the show. So that's why that's been changed and Le Milieu is not an actual criminal organization.


End file.
